Blues Boy: The Life and Music of B.B. King (American Made Music Series)

Rating:
Summary: There's Are Too Many Good Books on B. B. King to Read This!
Review: B. B. King wrote his autobiography, Blues All Around Me in 1996, and if you're interested in the story of B. B. King that's the book to read. Charles Keil's book Urban Blues is also quite good. Mr. Danchin adds no new information to the B. B. King story and includes some misinformation and bad judgements that are misleading.

It would be difficult to overstate the influence B. B. King had on Blues music in the 1950's. B. B. was impressed by T-Bone Walker's sound. T-Bone recorded blues songs with jazz musicians in his band. The sound was light and swinging and T-Bone's singing was smooth and sophisticated. T-Bone featured his own guitar playing, using single note guitar solos, which blues players hadn't done before.

Compare T-Bone's approach to B. B. King's approach. B. B.'s band was made up of blues musicians instead of jazz musicians. The beat was heavier than T-Bone's. B. B.'s singing style was more emotionally intense and gospel flavored. His guitar phrases were shorter than T-Bone's.

Many of the young blues stars of the late 1950's liked B. B. King's sound and used B. B. King as a model for their own styles of singing, bandleading and guitar playing. Think of Freddie King, Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy.

Danchin is often dismissive of B. B. King's early records like "Three O'Clock Blues" which he calls "pretty unpolished" and "not a new song". Danchin summarizes B. B.'s early appeal as "the climax of his development as an interpreter; rather than the triumph of an originator." But Freddie King, Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy knew something that Danchin missed. Lowell Fulson's version of "Three O'Clock Blues" didn't sound like B. B. King's version. B. B. King had a new exciting sound that made other people want to play like B. B. King. B. B.'s success was absolutely 'the triumph of an originator.'

Danchin makes an egregious error when he writes "the importance of Jules Bihari in building B. B. King's career has been insufficiently appreciated. It was Jules, rather than King, who usually decided on the arrangements and the musicians, and sometimes it was his ideas that decided the repertoire, as his brother Joe explained in a rare interview: 'On some songs, they had them in their head, but couldn't quite get it together, and there was help. . .You might notice the name of Jules Taub on some songs. That was a pseudonym for Jules Bihari, who worked with the artists."

In the 1950's it was common practice among independent record label owners to collect songwriting royalties that should have been paid to the artist, by claiming phony songwriting credit. When questioned about this practice later the label owners often gave explanations like the one above. A writer familiar with industry practices of the time should have been suspicious, but Danchin isn't. B. B. King writes in his autobiography that the thing he liked best about recording for the Bihari Brothers was that they left him alone in the recording studio and allowed him to do whatever he wanted! Danchin makes B. B. sound like a puppet of Bihari, which the evidence of King's continued sucess after leaving Bihari's record label doesn't support.

The good news is that Sebastian Danchin wrote a book about blues guitar player Earl Hooker, which is much better than this book. The Earl Hooker book is well worth reading if you think you might be even slightly interested in the subject.

Rating:
Summary: There's Are Too Many Good Books on B. B. King to Read This!
Review: B. B. King wrote his autobiography, Blues All Around Me in 1996, and if you're interested in the story of B. B. King that's the book to read. Charles Keil's book Urban Blues is also quite good. Mr. Danchin adds no new information to the B. B. King story and includes some misinformation and bad judgements that are misleading.

It would be difficult to overstate the influence B. B. King had on Blues music in the 1950's. B. B. was impressed by T-Bone Walker's sound. T-Bone recorded blues songs with jazz musicians in his band. The sound was light and swinging and T-Bone's singing was smooth and sophisticated. T-Bone featured his own guitar playing, using single note guitar solos, which blues players hadn't done before.

Compare T-Bone's approach to B. B. King's approach. B. B.'s band was made up of blues musicians instead of jazz musicians. The beat was heavier than T-Bone's. B. B.'s singing style was more emotionally intense and gospel flavored. His guitar phrases were shorter than T-Bone's.

Many of the young blues stars of the late 1950's liked B. B. King's sound and used B. B. King as a model for their own styles of singing, bandleading and guitar playing. Think of Freddie King, Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy.

Danchin is often dismissive of B. B. King's early records like "Three O'Clock Blues" which he calls "pretty unpolished" and "not a new song". Danchin summarizes B. B.'s early appeal as "the climax of his development as an interpreter; rather than the triumph of an originator." But Freddie King, Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy knew something that Danchin missed. Lowell Fulson's version of "Three O'Clock Blues" didn't sound like B. B. King's version. B. B. King had a new exciting sound that made other people want to play like B. B. King. B. B.'s success was absolutely 'the triumph of an originator.'

Danchin makes an egregious error when he writes "the importance of Jules Bihari in building B. B. King's career has been insufficiently appreciated. It was Jules, rather than King, who usually decided on the arrangements and the musicians, and sometimes it was his ideas that decided the repertoire, as his brother Joe explained in a rare interview: 'On some songs, they had them in their head, but couldn't quite get it together, and there was help. . .You might notice the name of Jules Taub on some songs. That was a pseudonym for Jules Bihari, who worked with the artists."

In the 1950's it was common practice among independent record label owners to collect songwriting royalties that should have been paid to the artist, by claiming phony songwriting credit. When questioned about this practice later the label owners often gave explanations like the one above. A writer familiar with industry practices of the time should have been suspicious, but Danchin isn't. B. B. King writes in his autobiography that the thing he liked best about recording for the Bihari Brothers was that they left him alone in the recording studio and allowed him to do whatever he wanted! Danchin makes B. B. sound like a puppet of Bihari, which the evidence of King's continued sucess after leaving Bihari's record label doesn't support.

The good news is that Sebastian Danchin wrote a book about blues guitar player Earl Hooker, which is much better than this book. The Earl Hooker book is well worth reading if you think you might be even slightly interested in the subject.